Angel of the Morning

by Judith Arnold

  Once they restocked the kitchen, they drove to Annie’s friend Lucy’s house for a play date. While Annie and Lucy spent two noisy hours attempting to dress Lucy’s cocker spaniel in a sunhat and T-shirt and racing around the back yard with the tolerant pooch, Gwen sat in the kitchen with Lucy’s mother, indulging in a glass of white wine and a significant amount of gossip. Gwen learned that the parents of Cara Schmidt—she of the round waffles—were getting a divorce, and that the principal at the girls’ school had just received some sort of award from the state, and that Paul Hammond’s mother was planning to invite the entire kindergarten class to Paul’s birthday party in December. “She’s nuts,” Lucy’s mother declared. Gwen had to agree. Twenty-two screeching, sugar-crazed five-year-olds in one house? Insane.

  She appreciated the distraction Lucy and her mother provided. The gossip gave her something to think about besides Dylan Scott, his unwelcome intrusion in her life, and her fear that he’d intrude in Annie’s life, as well.

  But eventually the play date ended. Gwen buckled Annie into her car seat and they headed for home. By now, Gwen thought hopefully, Dylan might be halfway back to California. She didn’t have to worry about him, did she? He’d bolted from the store as soon as he’d seen Annie. Surely he wanted nothing to do with Gwen’s little girl.

  “Can we get a dog?” Annie asked, her voice drifting forward from the back seat. Her cheeks were ruddy from romping outdoors with Lucy in the chilly, late-autumn afternoon. She’d probably fall asleep early tonight.

  It wasn’t the first time Annie had asked for a dog, nor the first time Gwen had to answer with a no. “It’s hard to take care of a dog when no one’s home all day,” she said. “I work, and you’re at school and then in the after-school program. Who’d play with the dog while we were gone? Who’d feed it and let it out to go to the bathroom?”

  “I could stop going to after-school,” Annie proposed. “I could come home and play with the dog.”

  “But then I’d have to hire a baby-sitter every day, and you wouldn’t be able to play with your friends.” The program Annie attended from three each afternoon until Gwen picked her up at around five cost significantly less than a nanny or au pair, and it offered Annie plenty of playmates and the opportunity to enjoy activities Gwen didn’t want to deal with. She often joked with the other mothers that she’d enrolled Annie in the program solely so Annie wouldn’t finger-paint at home. She could do her finger-painting at the after-school program, and Gwen’s house would be spared that particular mess.

  “I could bring the dog to after-school.”

  “We’ll discuss getting a dog when you’re a little older,” Gwen promised. She’d had dogs growing up, but she’d also had an older brother, and her parents, both professors at the University of Illinois, had had flexible schedules, so there was always someone around to take care of the assorted Parker pets. She would love for Annie to have a dog, too—and maybe, if she and Mike got married, they could figure out a schedule that would allow for pet care.

  Right now, though, Gwen had her hands full caring for Annie and the store. She couldn’t take on any more responsibilities.

  “Is Mike coming over tonight?” Annie asked as Gwen steered up the driveway and pushed the remote to open the garage.

  “Probably.” But possibly not. He’d been pissed off yesterday, because despite Gwen’s having hired a baby-sitter, freeing her for the evening, she and Mike hadn’t wound up making love. She’d been too upset about having seen Dylan at the Faulk Street Tavern, and she hadn’t been able to tell Mike the cause of her distress. What should she have said to him? “There’s the father of my daughter.” No, that wouldn’t have been good.

  She and Mike had been dating a year before she’d finally felt comfortable enough to tell him that Annie’s father had been a member of the film crew that had passed through town six years ago. Mike hadn’t pressed for more information, and she hadn’t offered any. If she’d revealed to Mike that Dylan Scott—Captain Steele himself—had contributed the sperm that created Annie, Mike would be pestering her to hire a lawyer and take Dylan for every dollar she could wring out of him. That was the way Mike was.

  She might be thinking about marrying him, but certain things were her own business. Annie would undoubtedly benefit from having a father figure in her life, but while Mike might pass as a father figure, he would never be Annie’s father. Gwen had raised her little girl single-handedly, and she wasn’t about to trust Mike Bonneville or anyone else to step in and take over.

  Sometimes she thought her reluctance to allow Mike full parenting privileges was a sign that she didn’t really love him enough to marry him. But she was well past believing that some ideal man would magically sweep into her world and make it complete, that he’d not only love Annie as much as Gwen did but he’d share her child-rearing philosophy and fill every crack and pit in her life like warm putty, smoothing all the rough spots.

  Mike was a good man. Gwen got along with him, and he wanted to marry her. She’d reached the point in her life when stability and comfort seemed more important than romance.

  Nothing’s perfect, she reminded herself as she and Annie entered the house. They hooked their coats on the wall pegs in the mudroom and continued into the kitchen. Gwen checked her phone to see if Mike had left a message. He hadn’t. She’d make enough dinner for him, and if he didn’t come, she’d freeze the leftovers. He wasn’t crazy about her spaghetti and meat sauce, anyway, since she used whole-wheat pasta and ground turkey, along with stewed tomatoes, mushrooms, broccoli and whatever other vegetables she felt like tossing in. “Too healthy,” Mike would complain. If he could eat pizza three times a day, he’d be a happy man.

  Annie donned her apron. She was always eager to help Gwen cook. Sometimes Gwen thought this was mainly because she loved the apron, with its pictures of Winnie-the-Pooh characters adorning it and its long waist strings that she could wrap around her wiry little body and tie in front. At her age, she was mostly tasked with mixing things, stirring things, and setting the table—nothing involving sharp knives or stove burners—but Gwen was grateful they could share this time.

  Annie was tearing romaine into the salad bowl and Gwen was sautéing the vegetables and ground turkey when the doorbell rang. “Mike!” Annie shouted, jumping down from the step-stool she used to reach the counter and darting out of the kitchen.

  Gwen turned off the stove and followed Annie to the front door. “Let me answer,” she warned Annie, but her daughter was already swinging the door open. That was something Gwen needed to work with her on. Annie was too short to see out the window in the upper part of the door; she had to learn not to open it when she didn’t know who was on the other side.

  In this case, the person on the other side wasn’t Mike. It was Dylan Scott.

  Annie fell back a step, although she didn’t look alarmed. “Mommy, it’s a customer,” she said. “From the store.”

  She had a good memory. Then again, Dylan was pretty unforgettable.

  Gwen’s stomach clenched. It was one thing for him to locate her store on Seaview Avenue—he’d been there six years ago, after all—but another for him to locate her house. And another yet for him not just to locate her house but to stand on her porch, feet firmly planted on the bricks, one hand gripping the door frame, as if he expected her to shove him down the steps. A shove wouldn’t get rid of him, she knew. He looked immovable.

  He also looked angry.

  And ridiculously sexy, with his wild hair and his scruff of beard and that sinfully macho leather jacket.

  Gwen gave her daughter a gentle nudge. “Annie, sweetheart, would you go in the kitchen, please?”

  “Is he staying for dinner?” Annie asked.

  “No,” Gwen said quickly, aware that Dylan had been about to speak. His mouth remained half-open, his lips sliding into a humorless grin. “Please go in the kitchen while I talk to Mr. Scott.”

  Annie peered up at him, her eyes wide. He stared right back at her, and
Gwen suppressed a shudder as their resemblance registered on her. Did Annie sense the connection? Could she tell, just by looking at Dylan, that he was her father?

  “Annie?”

  “Okay,” Annie said reluctantly, tearing her gaze from Dylan and clomping back to the kitchen.

  “She likes me,” Dylan said.

  Gwen pressed her lips together. Until she figured out how to deal with him, her safest strategy was to remain silent.

  “Can I come in?”

  “No.”

  His smile disappeared. He spoke softly, urgently, an undertone of bitterness stretching his voice taut. “Look. You went and had this child. You never told me about her. You kept this a secret from me. Damn it, Gwen—”

  “I did not keep her a secret from you. I contacted you half a dozen times. You didn’t want any part of her—or me. So please, just leave us alone.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Rage seethed beneath the surface of his steady voice, threatening to bubble over.

  “Mommy?” Annie’s voice floated in from the kitchen. “I’m done with the lettuce.”

  Gwen was torn in two. Half of her wanted to return to the kitchen, to resume preparing dinner with Annie—to go back to the life she’d been living before a song had burst out of the Faulk Street Tavern jukebox and changed everything. The other half of her wanted to remain in the front hall, just across the threshold from Dylan. She wanted to dive into his dark eyes, to discover what lay behind them. Was he lying? Was he insane? Did he really not know what she was talking about? At this point, did it matter?

  “I have to go,” she said, then eased the door shut and let out a long breath. His eyes... They truly were mesmerizing.

  She couldn’t let her thoughts veer off in that direction. He had come to her house to discuss the daughter whose existence he’d decided, years ago, to ignore. It was too late. There was no room in her life, or Annie’s, for an irresponsible asshole like Dylan Scott, regardless of how mesmerizing his eyes were.

  She hurried back down the hall to the kitchen, where she found Annie pulling a tub of pitted olives from a low shelf in the refrigerator. “Can I put olives in the salad?” she asked.

  “Yes, but not like last time.” A few days ago, Annie had emptied the entire tub—a good two dozen olives—into a salad just for the two of them. “Can you count out ten olives?”

  “I can count to a hundred,” Annie boasted, giving her mother a long-suffering look. “I can count to a skillion.”

  “Well, we don’t want a skillion olives in the salad. Or even a hundred olives. Just put in ten.”

  “I’ll put in twelve,” Annie announced. Sometimes the girl’s stubbornness drove Gwen up a wall. Other times, though, it filled her with pride. After all, she’d inherited that stubbornness from her mother.

  The doorbell rang again. “Don’t answer it,” Gwen warned, but Annie was already prancing down the hall, still clutching the plastic tub containing the olives. Gwen raced after her. “Remember what I said about not opening the door when you don’t know who’s on the other side?”

  “I do know,” Annie said, although she obediently refrained from twisting the door knob. “It’s Mike.”

  Gwen peered through the window embedded in the door. She saw Mike. “Well, you’re right this time,” she told Annie. “You can let him in.”

  Smiling, Annie swung open the door. Mike stood on the porch—but so did Dylan. He’d been just beyond Gwen’s sight-line when she’d glanced out the window.

  He and Mike were already bonding, unfortunately. “Look who I found on your doorstep,” Mike said, stepping inside and planting a friendly kiss on Gwen’s cheek. “A famous actor!”

  Annie gazed up at Dylan. “Are you famous?” she asked.

  “He’s an actor,” Gwen said before Dylan could answer. “Annie, please go to the kitchen.”

  “I want to say hi to Mike.”

  “Say hi, and then go to the kitchen.”

  Annie looked irritated. Mike looked bemused. Dylan looked...angry and sexy, like before. He also looked as if he understood why she wanted Annie far away.

  “Hi,” Annie grumbled. “Mommy’s making spaghetti with lots of vegetables. You won’t like it.”

  Mike laughed. He must have stopped home after work before coming here. He never wore jeans to work—“No one wants to buy a new car from someone wearing jeans,” he claimed—but he was wearing them now, along with sneakers, a New England Patriots sweatshirt and a lined windbreaker. “I can pick out the vegetables,” he said. “So, Annie, did you know this is a movie star? He’s Captain Steele, from the Galaxy Force movies.”

  “She hasn’t seen those movies,” Gwen said. “She’s too young.”

  “I could see them,” Annie said, her gaze still fixed on Dylan. “I’m big now. I go to school.”

  “In a couple of years,” Gwen said, trying to sound reasonable. “There’s lots of violence in them. Guns and explosions.” She shot Mike a sharp look. Thanks to him—and Dylan—she’d been forced to make a second in-the-future promise to Annie: a dog, and now Dylan’s stupid movies. “Mike, why don’t you help Annie with the salad? I have to talk to Dylan.”

  Mike’s eyebrows twitched up and down, but he was smiling as he took the tub of olives from Annie. “Come on, Annie-girl. Let’s make a salad.”

  “I already did the lettuce,” she told him as they headed down the hall together.

  As soon as they were gone, Gwen turned back to Dylan. He still stood on the porch—and still looked as if he’d rooted himself there and had no intention of going anywhere.

  At least he hadn’t entered the house. Gwen positioned herself in the doorway so he’d have to knock her over if he wanted to come inside. He might be angry, but she doubted he would tackle her just to get to Annie.

  “So—he’s not your husband,” he said, angling his head in the direction Mike had disappeared.

  “No.” Gwen didn’t owe him an explanation about her love life, but it was easier to answer that simple question than to argue.

  “Gwen.” He sounded a little calmer than he had before. “You never told me you were pregnant. If you had, I would have...” He mulled over his words, then concluded, “Done something. Helped you out. Made arrangements.”

  “I did tell you. I found your contact information on a website and sent several emails. I did research and phoned your management company.”

  He frowned. “You told them you were pregnant?”

  “I told them I had important information and I needed to speak with you. I wasn’t even sure at first if I was going to terminate the pregnancy. I wanted to talk to you before I made that decision.”

  His forehead creased with a frown. He glanced up at the sky, then shook his head. “You should have told them you were pregnant. They would have made sure I knew.”

  She snorted. “I did, finally. I didn’t want to share something that personal with some receptionist in California, but when I didn’t hear from you, I told her. She put me through to some man who told me to leave you alone. He said that if I tried to contact you again, he’d have me charged with harassment.” At the time, she’d been shocked by the man’s threat, and fearful. Now she felt only a low-burning resentment. “Needless to say, I didn’t try to contact you again.”

  “Shit.” He closed his eyes and shook his head again. “Gwen, I—”

  “I decided not to get an abortion, and it was the right decision for me. And I’m perfectly content to leave you alone. I hope you’ll return the favor. Annie doesn’t need you in her life.”

  “Why? Because she’s got that guy who isn’t your husband? What’s he, her substitute daddy?”

  “None of your business,” Gwen snapped. “Please. Just go.”

  He pondered her for a long moment, then relented. “I’ll go. But I’ll be back.” With that promise—that threat—he turned and strode down the front walk, into the night.

  Chapter Seven

  “Dylan! It’s about time you got b
ack to me. I’ve been trying to reach you to discuss the licensing deal for that new Galaxy Force app. They want to use your likeness in the game. The numbers they’ve mentioned are excellent. We’re still negotiating, but—”

  “That’s not why I’m calling,” Dylan said. He was standing by the open window in his room at the Ocean Bluff Inn, a cold, salty breeze whispering through the screen. He could see pale gray wisps of clouds floating in the late evening sky above a dark ocean. The horizon was barely visible, dark blue against dark blue.

  That darkness suited his mood. He’d turned on the desk lamp, but it spread only a small pool of amber light across the desk’s surface, not much brighter than a night-light. He remained at the window, his back to the room, staring out at the night.

  He didn’t want to hear about Brian’s negotiations regarding some cell-phone game that would feature a Captain Steele avatar who resembled Dylan about as much as Goofy resembled an actual dog, but which would wind up paying Dylan enough to make the house just a few minutes’ drive north of where he stood even more affordable. It was ridiculous, the amount of money people flung at you when you were the star of a successful film franchise

  He’d already heard back from Andrea with a counter-offer from the house’s current owners; those negotiations were going fine. He wished he cared. Right now, he wasn’t sure whether he should pay whatever the sellers demanded just to own that house in Brogan’s Point, or pack up his stuff, return to California, and pretend he’d never set foot in this God-forsaken town.

  But first things first. Brian. “I’m firing you,” he said.

  Brian fell silent for a moment. Then he burst into laughter, hoarse and rasping, a tribute to his thirty-year love affair with cigarettes. “Oh, come on, Dylan. You spend a few days on the East Coast and forget who you are! Look, I’m sorry The Angel didn’t pan out. But I got you that audition, and they loved you. They didn’t even want to consider you—they kept saying you couldn’t possibly overcome your Captain Steele identity for the film. But I got you in the door, and you blew them away at the audition. You came this close to getting the part, man. I’m sorry I couldn’t work a miracle for you, but I got you in front of them, and they thought you were fabulous.”